Wheeled janitorial trays or buckets adapted to be used onsite in sanitary maintenance are well known in the art and have found wide applications in various commercial housekeeping and maintenance duties such as in hospitals and hotels. In particular, some maintenance tasks require housekeepers or janitors to clean and sanitize utensils, fixtures, furniture, and similar objects or surfaces without removing them from the facility. In order to perform such tasks, a wheeled bucket containing one or more cleaning liquids is often transported to the vicinity of a targeted object or surface, where the housekeeper or janitor uses a sponge, mop or other suitable cleaning device to apply the cleaning liquid to clean, sanitize, and/or rinse the targeted object or surface.
To streamline the cleaning process, the cleaning equipment used to apply the cleaning liquid, such as sponges, brushes, scrubbers, and the like, may be attached, supported or secured to the wheeled bucket through one or more receptacles. However, because most of the wheeled buckets are bulky and permanently attached to the wheels, and stay on the ground during cleaning, transfer of the cleaning liquid from the bucket to the objects or surfaces often results in liquid spillage, which may requires separate mopping and/or drying processes.
Light-weight and hand-carried janitorial trays or buckets are also known in the art. For example, a portable cleaning bucket may be used to clean and sanitize objects in a room. The bucket may include an open-top container with a rectangular bottom wall and four sidewalls. The container may be divided into multiple compartments each of which contains water or cleaning composition for separate washing, rinsing, or sanitizing operations. However, the bucket has no way of draining the openings without inverting the entire bucket. This necessitates that all the adjunct cleaning supplies in the bucket be removed prior to inversion, resulting in added labor and effort.
The carts described above have been used in a wide variety of public settings such as hospitals, hotels, airports, schools, businesses, etc. The carts have been found to be versatile in meeting the various needs of sanitary maintenance duties. Nevertheless, because of the ubiquitous public applications in which such carts are used, it has been found that commercially available carts of the type described above have certain deficiencies.
For example, as all existing portable devices require the inversion of the bucket to drain the cleaning water, it is not uncommon for the housekeeper to use the same water from one room to the next. Accordingly, germs, bacteria, fungus, and disease from one patient or guest can quickly be spread around the facility.
Additionally, the cleaning liquids used in various applications are sometimes harmful if ingested or improperly handled. Storing such material in open-top containers on accessible shelves of a janitorial cart creates a risk that children, the elderly or mentally disabled passing the cart may access the chemicals and be harmed thereby if the cleaning and sanitization tasks are to be performed without evacuation of the facility.
Further, there is a tipping risk associated with transporting full bucket of liquid on the forward end of a janitorial cart. The high center of gravity of a full container may make it prone to tip under certain conditions, particularly as the cart negotiates turns. If filled with harmful or hazardous material, tipping of the janitorial bucket can result in an undesirable exposure of the surrounding environment to such material.
Hence, there is a need for a safer and more efficient portable janitorial container for carrying one or more janitorial liquids as well as janitorial supplies and equipment to perform onsite cleaning and/or sanitization. Further, there is a need for a janitorial container with a fast drain mechanism that allows convenient draining of the cleaning liquids without disturbing the janitorial supplies and equipment attached to or secured on the janitorial container. Finally, there is a need for a portable janitorial container that can be conveniently and removably mounted on a janitorial cart to streamline the cleaning and/or sanitization tasks it performs.